When polar explorer Ernest Shackleton handed a starving fellow traveller a biscuit on an expedition more than 100 years ago, his companion said he would not swap the morsel of food for “thousands of pounds.”

Now one of the biscuits which nearly made it to the South Pole on the Anglo-Irish Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition is expected to sell for almost that amount when it is auctioned in London today.

The biscuit, one of thousands which were the diet for Shackleton and his companions on the 1907-1909 expedition, has a catalogue price of up to £1,500 ($2,350, €1,700), according to auctioneers Christie’s.

Made especially for the expedition by British biscuit company Huntley and Palmers, the rations were fortified with milk protein to help the group on their arduous journey. (AFP)

Ground beef

Tyson, the biggest meat processor in the United States, is recalling 131,300 pounds of ground beef sold in 14 states after an outbreak of e.coli in Ohio, US food inspectors said yesterday.

The ground beef – enough for more than half a million hamburgers – was sold with a best-before date of September 12, but the Department of Agriculture fears that much of it may have been frozen by consumers for later use.

In a statement, it said its food safety and inspection service “strongly encourages consumers to check their freezers and immediately discard any product subject to this recall.”

Triggering the New York-to-Texas recall was the discovery of e.coli bacteria in ground beef consumed by a Cincinatti area family that fell ill in mid-September.

One member of the stricken family was a child who spent 10 days in hospital, the Cincinanati Enquirer newspaper reported, quoting a county public health official.

Symptoms of e.coli poisoning include diarrhoea, dehydration and, in very severe cases, kidney failure. (AFP)

Right-to-live

A terminally-ill boy whose family’s struggle to keep him alive despite overwhelming odds spurred an international end-of-life debate has died aged 20 months.

Joseph Maraachli suffered from the progressive neurological disease Leigh Syndrome.

A family spokesman said Joseph’s father, Moe, told him the baby died at home surrounded by his family. He said it was likely that the child died of complications related to his disease but that the cause of death has yet to be announced.

“The family is very distraught but grateful they had this time with their son,” he said. (PA)

‘Mademoiselle’

French feminists have launched a campaign to abolish the use of “mademoiselle”, a term for an unmarried woman still used on official papers which they say demeans and enshrines sexism.

France has no equivalent to the ambiguous “Ms” used in English, and French feminists do not see the need for it. They just don’t see why it is deemed necessary immediately to know a woman’s marital status and not a man’s.

“When opening a bank account, it’s impossible to be called ‘Madame’ if you’re unmarried. You will certainly end up as ‘Mademoiselle’,” Christine wrote on www.viedemeuf.fr, a forum for the “sexist cliches of daily life.”

“It might seem like a detail but it’s highly symbolic of inequalities,” said Julie Muret, of Osez le feminisme! (Dare feminism!), which this week, along with the Chiennes de Garde group (Guard dogs), launched a campaign for “mademoiselle” to be officially abolished. (AFP)

Same-sex kiss

Less than a month after telling a rock star to pull up his saggy pants, a US airline on Tuesday found itself in another celebrity row – this time over a same-sex kiss.

Cable TV star Leisha Hailey and partner Camila Grey say they were ordered off a Southwest Airlines flight after they disagreed with a flight attendant who told them to stop smooching on “a family airline.”

Southwest acknowledged that the crew of the flight from Baltimore, Maryland to St. Louis, Missouri had approached the couple, but “solely (on the basis of) behaviour and not gender” after other passengers complained.

It offered to “work directly” with them to offer “heartfelt apologies” – but in a statement issued through their Los Angeles publicist, the couple said they would press ahead with “a formal complaint.” (AFP)